The squirrels are not feral—yet

Walkers in the park where I run (and sometimes on more injury-riddled days walk) have taken to feeding squirrels. At first it seemed a quaint pastime, harmless and benign. After all, they're cute little balls of energy—I'm talking about the squirrels now—and giving them an occasional handout seemed positively humane. But now that the balls of energy have transmogrified into panhandling rodents, maybe it's time to reevaluate the pastime.

First off, the squirrels are everywhere—in the trees, on the ground, in the space between the ground and the trees (sometimes referred to as the trunks) and on virtually every square foot of grass in that park. They exist in superfluity. If there is an opposite of an endangered species, they are it. There may be famines in several third-world countries, but these squirrels are in the midst of no such hardship. They are fat, healthy, and did I mention, EVERYWHERE? If ever an animal did not need human support to continue its species, it's the squirrel—especially the park squirrel.

The park squirrel, you see, is quite different from the backyard, bird-feeder-raiding squirrel to which you have grown accustomed. The backyard squirrel will run for its life if a human being treads in the same time zone. They're afraid of us, I guess because we're bigger, and so they forage with one eye on any human in the area. The park squirrel keeps both eyes on the human because one of those humans may very well have a bag of peanuts that he is willing to share. Foraging has become for the park squirrel, a quaint tradition, someone to tell the little squirrelings about while they're sitting around a bag of roasted peanuts on a winter night.

I know that no matter what I say here, I am not going to disabuse people of the habit of squirrel-feeding. So allow me to make a counter offer: I would like to introduce the gray wolf into the park's ecosystem, just as in Yellowstone a decade ago. Not only would these animals reduce the squirrel population, but since they don't much care for peanuts, walkers and runners would be less likely to carry bags of rewards with them. For one thing, the food would weigh them down, and they may have to walk or run fast in certain situations.

Wolves, as you know, are different from squirrels.